THE INSTITUTE FOR CULTURAL RESEARCH

The Press Gang

The World in Journalese

Philip Howard

2000

Monograph Series No. 40

Copyright © 2000 The Institute for Cultural Research

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Monograph Series No. 40

This version prepared for free download 2006.
The original hard copy edition:
ISSN 0306 1906 – ISBN 0 904674 32 0 – Published 2000
may be purchased from the address given above, or on the ICR website,
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THE AUTHOR

Philip Howard is a leader writer and columnist for The Times. He

often writes the third (whimsical, arty, jokey) leaders. His columns
include the daily Word Watching quiz and Modern Manners
(etiquette and jokes). He has written several books of general
history and social affairs, as well as several about the changing
English language.

Author’s Note

This monograph derives from a talk given at Power of Speech:

Language and Human Nature, a seminar presented by the Institute
for Cultural Research in January 2000.

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 THE PRESS GANG
The World in Journalese

Does Journalese exist?

The answer to this question had better be “yes”. For otherwise,
what are we doing wasting our time reading, or indeed writing, a
monograph about it? And the robust answer to the question is, of
course, “Yes, Journalese exists.” There is no need to spend our first
500 pages, as in the book about translation, discussing whether
translation is possible. Of course it is possible, at least at one level.
Otherwise what are we doing reading, or indeed writing, a door-
stopper about it? At the very least Journalese exists in the same
category as unicorns or boojums. We may not meet creatures of
either species in safari parks or nature programmes on television.
But we have a pretty good idea of what unicorns are from medieval
romances and bestiaries (and Walt Disney’s Fantasia and the royal
arms). And we know that a boojum is an imaginary animal, a
particularly dangerous kind of “snark”, from Lewis Carroll’s The
Hunting of the Snark. So Journalese is not a category mistake as is,
for example, the absurd phrase: “the pinkness of time squeaks until
it sleeps.” (Though note that somebody might claim that that last
sentence was a metaphor or poetry. “Time crawls” is a category
mistake. But it is also an intelligible metaphor.)

So what is Journalese?
The term is a put-down, not a compliment. The word was invented
shortly before 1882 to describe the language in which more people
do their reading than any other. In benighted parts of the country,
far from universities, a “book” still means a magazine from the
news agent’s. The Oxford English Dictionary defines Journalese:
“The style of language supposed to be characteristic of public
journals; ‘newspaper’ or ‘penny-a-liner’s’ English.” Freelance rates
have not improved much, but the idea of a lineage fee of a penny a

4
line shows how long ago that definition was made. Greedy
celebrities with dragon agents demand (and, if the commissioning
editor is desperate enough, occasionally get) a pound a word these
days. Webster’s gives a fuller and more detailed definition of
Journalese: “English of a style featured by use of colloquialisms,
superficiality of thought or reasoning, clever or sensational
presentation of material, and evidence of haste in composition,
considered characteristic of newspaper writing.” All the earliest
examples are pejorative. The Pall Mall Gazette, 1882: “Translated
from ‘Journalese’ into plain English.” Rudyard Kipling, who was a
journalist before he turned short-story writer and poet, wrote in
Many Inventions, l893: “I refrained from putting any Journalese
into it.” It is curious how little use of journalism Kipling made in
his fiction. (Perhaps a monograph there, Ed?) The inky trade
features in only one of his stories, though that is a very funny one:
The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat.

Examples, please
Tabloidese, which is the liveliest dialect of Journalese, fantasises
that the reporter is a hard-bitten hack (played by James Cagney,
Kirk Douglas, or Humphrey Bogart), with his trilby tilted to the
back of his head, and a Lucky Strike stuck to his bottom lip,
shouting ‘Hold the Front Page!’ down the telephone to his copy-
taker. It is essentially a made-up language, a primitive Esperanto,
composed of short, sharp, macho words, such as “rap”, “probe”,
and “bid”. In Journalese, nouns, verbs, and adjectives are
interchangeable. It is punchy, short, and old-fashioned. For
example, although corporal punishment has been banned in
British schools for many years, its memory lives on (especially on
frosty mornings) among the middle-aged men who generally
become sub-editors (they prepare cub reporters’ “copy” for
printing). Their boyhood reading was Billy Bunter and other
ripping yarns, in which canes were constantly swishing against
Bunter’s tight checkered trousers. Yarooch! So caning, flogging and
thrashing live on in Journalese, although they are obsolete in life.
“Getting a caning” is what “Sir” (anyone in authority) gets when all
that actually happens to him is that he is reprimanded,
disadvantaged, or “slammed”.

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 Nobody other than Reginald Perrin ever “went missing”. But
“going missing” is Journalese for “disappear”. Journalists would
rename Janacek’s The Man who Disappeared in Journalese: “The
Man who Went Missing.” When the football manager is sacked,
Journalese describes him as “tight-lipped and ashen faced”, even if
his face is crimson with rage or drink, and his lips loose enough to
utter a stream of four-letter words, as he “storms out” or is
“whisked away”. When a diarist writes, “I hear that...” in
Journalese, in plain English he means, “I read in a public-relations
hand-out...” Continual puns are a sub-genre of Journalese. Does it
add anything to a review of the Amadeus Quartet to caption
them as “stringing along”? “Colonic irritation” anyone? “Somme
like it hot” about the carnage of 1916 was the worst-taste
Journalese pun in the past year, on the level of The Sun’s
“GOTCHA!” to describe sending 600 young men to their deaths in
the Belgrano. No report of nudity is complete without a reference
to “the cold shoulder”, just as you cannot mention exposed buttocks
without “barefaced cheek”.
“A shot in the arm” competes with “shooting oneself in the foot”.
The latter is a badly aimed metaphor. In the 1914-18 War, whence
the expression comes, to shoot oneself in the foot was a deliberate
act of self-mutilation in order to escape from the trenches. But it has
become Journalese for a self-damaging accident or cock-up. In the
real world, mayors and lavatories are losing their chains. But any
reference to them in the public prints still evokes the Journalese pun
of “chain reaction”. Subbing is concentrated work under the “lash”
of the deadline. It can be boring as well as demanding. It is possible
that some of the puns are written to amuse or show off to rival
journalists rather than entertain “ordinary people” (Journalese
clitch1: pray define an extraordinary person, and I do not count a
Pop celeb as such).

What do you think about it?

Newspapers ought to be written in the everyday language of their
readers, not in a private, esoteric code. Their readers are no longer
highly educated ruling élites, perusing their (ironed) paper of record

1. Cliché, as pronounced by the late Lord George-Brown.

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in their leather arm chairs at leisure, before going in to lunch in the
Coffee Room of the Garrick. They are working people struggling to
read in the cattle-trucks of the rush hour. So journalism ought to be
in simple English, not complicated; with short, not long sentences;
using concrete, not abstract words. Different sections will use
different registers of English. So, much of a football report will be
gobbledygook to the reader of an opera review, whereas the
opera review will seem strangely obscure and pointless to fans of
David Beckham.
For a modern daily newspaper is a huge hamper, containing
thousands of little packets and boxes of Tupperware with
delicacies for all tastes. It wants to appeal to as many different
types of reader as possible. You are not expected to read or enjoy
all the picnic. But you should be able to understand all its
delicacies, except perhaps that financial nonsense on the City
pages, which is as unintelligible as the Rosetta Stone to all except
those seriously interested in money. So a newspaper should be
written in the everyday written language of its target readerships.
However, any trade or profession develops its jargon as a
shorthand. And some of this leaks out into the general discourse.
This paper will argue that Journalese comes in many kinds, good,
bad, and indifferent. It should always be looked at through
narrowed eyes, before you press the “send” key on the computer to
print it. Good Journalese should be natural, lively and a pleasure to
read. If you have to read a sentence twice in order to catch its drift,
that is bad Journalese, as well as being a bloody nuisance on the
Tube, with your feet not touching the ground, and other men’s
heads stuck between you and the paper.

What is Journalese for?

For many reasons, some good, some bad. Here are a few of them:

1. To attract attention.
Formerly the town crier used to ring a bell to summon the citizens
to hear the latest news. When the BBC started to broadcast, news
readers on the wireless had to wear dinner jackets for their listeners.
And on a quiet news-day, they ran out of news before the end of
their bulletin. So they would announce: “There are no more news

7
tonight. So we are going to play you some Mozart.” No fear of that
today. News has increased so that there is no escape from it around
the clock. Our newsmen produce more news than we can consume
at a single sitting. And dozens of news media compete for our
attention: newspapers, television, radio, the Internet, gossip. Hence
comes the drama-seeking headline cliché, such as FAMOUS
ACTOR DEAD or EASTENDERS STAR WEDS, referring to
media celebs we have never heard of. G.K.Chesterton said it first in
1914: “Journalism largely consists in saying ‘Lord Jones Dead’ to
people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.” So note the use
of DAY in Journalese to hook the attention of the passer-by, and
force him/her to buy a copy. THE DAY THE TUBE BLEW A
FUSE. THE DAY THE WHEEL WAS REINVENTED. THE DAY
THE BISHOP CALLED ON A BLONDE.

2. To sound trendy
Journalists have to pretend to know everything about everything. In
fact (though please do not broadcast this) they know surprisingly
little about many things. So they pretend to omniscience by the slap
and crackle of their Journalese. It is the language of insider name-
dropping and letting you, the reader, into secrets. It is a cynical code
that reads as though it should be wise-cracked out of the side of the
mouth by Bogart or Kirk Douglas playing ace reporter. It is tough-
guy. For example “Get the chop” and “Go through the mincer” are
Journalese metaphors from the butcher’s.

3. Economy and brevity

This is a good reason. Early newspapers had no headlines.
Modern newspapers, especially the tabloids and Red-Tops (down-
market tabloids for the lager-lout classes) now have huge
headlines to emphasise the importance of their splash (front-
page story). As in FREDDY STARR ATE MY HAMPSTER.
If Freddy Starr had eaten my HIPPOPOTAMUS the headline
would have “bust”, i.e. not fitted on the page. The headline
bellows, DROP EVERYTHING: YOU MUST READ THIS.
Or, more often than subs realise, WASTE NO TIME ON
READING THIS RUBBISH. For huge print you need small
words. For ANNOYANCE (9 letters) in Journalese read STORM
(5). It is shorter and noisier. For ENCOURAGE (9 letters) read

8
BOOST (5). For CRITICISE (9) read SLAM, BLAST, or HIT
OUT. AXE or SCRAP are Journalese for DISMISS, CANCEL, or
RESHUFFLE. The last is Lobby jargon. After you have shuffled
the cards at Bridge, how often do you reshuffle? DEVELOPMENT
(11) is useless for headlines. MOVE is preferable. NON-
PARTICIPANTS (15) is hopeless. REBELS (6) is shorter and
sounds more exciting.

4. To avoid thought
This is a bad reason. Daily journalists have to churn out copy at
frightening speed. An issue of The Times contains as many
words as three large novels. We do not start writing them until after
lunch. And you know what journos’ lunches are popularly (though
these days untruly) supposed to be. So it is not surprising that
writing in haste to catch the edition we sometimes scribble: “With
regard to the discussion which took place at yesterday’s meeting in
reference to the position arising out of the present situation, the
result, so far as the practical point of view is concerned, was of a
purely negative character.” Better would be: “Nothing came of
yesterday’s discussion.”

Is Journalese a good thing?

What a silly question. It is there. So, it is probably, like most human
creations, partly good, and partly bad. Journalese has its uses and
abuses. When it is good, it can be very, very good. And when it is
bad, it is horrid. You may regard British Tabs (tabloid newspapers)
and Red-Tops (the coarser tabloids) as the scum of the printed word
and an insult to intelligence. But millions of your fellow citizens
enjoy them. And in the inky trade they are regarded as the best in
the world. Their editors and other executives are head-hunted by
English-speaking tabloids all over the world. Aspirant pop
journalists from Australia to Alaska are sent to train in the Diaspora
of Fleet Street. No national newspaper has printed in Fleet Street
for twenty years. But note the curious antiquarianism of Journalese,
as in the sub-editors recycling Bunter in headlines. The man who is
reading The Daily Brute today may tire of the crap and read The
Thunderer tomorrow.

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An abuse of Journalese
Because of its extreme compression, Journalese can mislead,
particularly those readers who are not as used to its private codes
and grammar as the hacks. This danger of misunderstanding is most
common in headlines, because of their extremely abbreviated and
truncated essence. To make a reader stumble or force her to read a
headline or picture caption twice is Cardinal Sin 94 of Journalese.
Here are some recent potentially misleading headlines:

POLICE SQUAD HELPS DOG BITE VICTIM. [The cannibals.]

LUCKY MAN SEES PALS DIE. [The masochistic sod.]
CHILD TEACHING EXPERT TO SPEAK. [What sort of expert is
that?]
BISHOP DEFROCKS GAY PRIEST. [Hullo, Vicar.]
RUGBY TEAM’S COACH SET ON FIRE. [I know that Rob
Andrew is the most boring fly-half ever to play for England, always
kicking, never passing the ball out to his brilliant backs. It is a
tragedy that the selectors usually preferred him to Stuart Barnes.
But even Andrew seldom deserves to be burned.]
WOMAN BETTER AFTER BEING THROWN FROM HIGH
RISE. [What on Earth was she like before being defenestrated?]
CHILD’S STOOL GREAT FOR USE IN GARDEN. [So at last I
know what to do with the dirty nappies.]
KID’S PAJAMAS TO BE REMOVED BY WOOLWORTH.
[Corporate child abuse.]
EIGHTH ARMY PUSH BOTTLES UP GERMANS [Evening
Standard]
POLICE DISCOVER CRACK IN DEVON [The River Sid?]

Sex Romps
Sex, disaster and ghastly crime are believed to sell newspapers.
They are the foundation building-blocks of the Tabs and Red-Tops,
which dish the dirt daily on the amorous proclivities and
perversities of Soap and Pop stars whom nobody has heard of. So
it is a paradox of Journalese that their Editors cannot bring
themselves to use the plain English words for the activities that they
find endlessly fascinating.

10
 Broadsheet newspapers can print the taboo sexual four-letter
words in full, if there is a reason for doing so. But the decision to
publish them should not be taken lightly, wantonly, or ill-advisedly,
or without the consent of the Editor. For there are still a number of
readers out there who purport to be so shocked by the words that
when they read them they will write in in a rage cancelling their
subscriptions AGAIN. As usual The Times plays its part in this
secret corner of Journalese. On January 13, 1882 our interminable
report of an interminable speech by the Attorney General was
interspersed at intervals with the sentence: “The speaker then said
that he felt like a bit of [f-word with -ing at the end].” This untrue
and shocking assertion was spotted by the night “readers”, and
removed from the second edition. But our apology for this
unspecified “gross outrage” four days later will have puzzled
almost all readers, who will not have read the original report of a
speech as boring as most at party conferences, apart from its
outrageous interpolations. Future scholars of taboo words in
Journalese can find the name and history of the suspected
perpetrator (a disgruntled compositor who had been given his
cards) in The Times archives.
Broadsheets can publish the taboo words, for example between
inverted commas, if an ashen-faced and tight-lipped football
manager has uttered them as expletives. But the Tabs, which revel
in sexual tittle-tattle and innuendo, cannot publish them. So they
have invented a cunning code of Journalese. They publish the initial
letter of the words, followed by three asterisks, thus: f***, c***,
and s***. Readers of down-market rags are not usually Fellows of
All Souls. But even they can probably work out which word is
meant. Furthermore Journalese has invented a string of twee
euphemisms to describe the sexual acts it gloats over. “Sex romps”
is understood to mean sexual intercourse.
Other synonyms and euphemisms for sex in Journalese include
Hanky Panky, Kiss ‘n Cuddle, and Nookie. And the obsession with
sex is written up in the Sex Romping Register of Journalese,
nothing as frank and full-frontal as Mills & Boon, but a kind of
Penthouse Gothic. This is the particular house style employed by
the fantasy departments of the softcore monthlies. It is laced with
suggestive puns. Here is a recent example from the News of the
World. “He plied me with brandy, and brandy makes me randy.

11
Then he nudged up and pecked my cheek. He got really excited and
we ended up in his bedroom. But he was so small, and it was all
over in 30 seconds. I got up, found my knickers in the sitting-room
and went home. Afterwards he apologised for his chipolata. And
that’s what I called him.” The first name of the lover was Rod. And
not even the bedroom is a zone free from Journalese. The headline-
writer could not resist a bad pun. CHIPOLATA LOVER – SEX
PEST MODEL’S BITTER BLAST AT SMALL ROD.

Does Journalese affect ordinary English?

1. It would be odd if so widespread and popular a register of written
English did not have some effect on the common pool of
language.
2. I do not know how you would set about proving this proposition
(1). But I have no doubt that some university linguistics
department somewhere (probably at Leeds) is engaged on such
a survey.
3. But if Journalese is affecting English, does it matter? Is it not
a disgrace?
4. Don’t be so wet. “Ordinary people” (Journalese) are more
sensible than you suppose. They do not take “the Currant Bun”
and other Red Tops seriously, but as a bit of a giggle, confirming
the irrational bees and maggots in their bonnets. The steadily
declining circulation of the sillier Tabs indicates that the appetite
for reading about the shambolic “private” lives of idiotic Soap
and Pop stars is in secular decline. Hurray.

Should we, like Kipling, try to avoid Journalese?

A successful newspaper is written in the natural style of its readers.
But readers come with many styles. The review of a Pop record will
be written in a different style from an obituary or a law report (a
special case, since law reports are written by lawyers in legal
jargon, and can be used in court as case law).
Headlines are a pungent style of journalism, because of the
extreme pressure on space for words in big, bold type. But all
journalism should be in short, sharp, plain English. When he was
Editor of The Times, William Rees-Mogg at one stage laid down a

12
law that no sentence in the paper should contain more than twelve
words – except, of course, for his thunderous leaders demanding
the return to the Gold Standard, or predicting that Master William
Hague was destined to be a future Prime Minister. This was a sound
idea, but it proved hopeless in practice. Sub-editors spent too much
time counting words. Journalese, like English itself, is a great lake,
in which elephants can swim and lambs can paddle. Because of the
ferocious speed at which it has to be written, and the lash of the
deadline (Journalese reference to galley-slaves, I think), long
sentences, subordinate clauses, and abstract reasoning are best
avoided, except perhaps in leading articles.
For these reasons, unlike his friend Kipling, Henry James was ill-
equipped to be a journalist. Early in the 20th century he was invited
to contribute a “tribute” (signed encomium) to the Times obituary
of a literary personage. He was asked for 500 words. Being Henry
James, of course he wrote 5,000. So the unfortunate Obituaries
Editor sent him the galleys (proofs, long strips of yellowing
lavatory-type paper) with his tribute printed on them. And a
fawning letter: “Dear Mr. James. . . Magnificent tribute. . . Pure
literature... Very important... Unfortunately it is rather longer than
we have room for... Could you possibly be obliging enough to mark
optional cuts on these galleys to bring the piece down to a size that
can fit in the paper?” James’s reply is on the galleys in the archives
of The Times. He has marked only one sentence with square
brackets, in neat blue pencil, as an optional cut. Admittedly it is a
Jamesian sentence, and therefore pretty long. It is literature, not
Journalese. But it is nothing like as big a cut as the Obituaries
Editor was hoping for or would accommodate the tribute in the
paper. In the margin James has written in his punctilious sloping
hand: “You may, if you MUST, remove this sentence, without
totally destroying the flow of the tribute. BUT [in caps] YOURS IS
A BUTCHER’S [underlined three times] TRADE.”

Typos
All printing is liable to misprint. Even manuscript can have its
errors from scribes repeating the same letter by mistake
(dittography) or missing out words between two instances of the
same character. Textual critics make their living from hunting such

13
errors in ancient texts down the millennia. But misprints are
generally supposed to be a speciality of daily papers. See above
about the haste and flap in which we work. So The Guardian is
affectionately nicknamed The Grauniad, because of its proclivity to
typos. One of the most famous in The Times occurred in our report
of Queen Victoria opening the new bridge over the Menai Straits.
Our chief colour writer wrote in his stateliest purple: “Her Majesty
then passed over the bridge.” At least, that is what he meant to
write. But an error in typesetting altered one vowel, and had Queen
Victoria doing something far more sensational over the bridge.
I wrote a piece in which the phrase “press gang” occurred more
than once. It was subbed by Sam Obu, a Ghanaian, whose English
grammar was better than that of most of the staff. He has gone on
to become an Editor in his homeland. But Sam’s history and
background are Gold Coast not British. And in Ghana they knew all
about slavers, but nothing about press gangs. Sam thought that I
was being slangy, and altered “press gang” to “a party of
journalists” throughout the piece, giving it a surrealist flavour. I
dictated a report of the annual meeting of the Classical Association
from Leeds University. It contained references to the Dead Sea
Scrolls. But I have a Mediterranean R and cannot pronounce my Rs
in an intelligible way. So the report went into every edition of The
Times referring to the “Dead Sea Squirrels”.The sarcastic
correspondence about this error ran for months in the bottom right-
hand corner of the letters page.
The recent typo that I enjoyed most occurred in the obituary of a
“Moustache” (Journalese for war hero). We meant to describe him
as a “battle-scarred veteran”. By a typo this came up as a “battle-
SCARED veteran”. Naturally there were indignant protests from
Major-General Moustache’s family, friends, and solicitor. But our
grovelling apology and correction on the following day made
matters worse. “We should, of course, have referred to Major-
General Moustache as a BOTTLE-scarred veteran.”

Leaderese
The language of leading articles (called editorials in the United
States) is an elevated branch of Journalese. It is longer, less slangy,
and (dare we say it?) more pompous than the Journalese of other

14
sections. It is Journalese dressed to kill in its morning coat and
spats. Most newspapers take the lofty view that the world would be
a far, far better place if only it were run from their editorial offices.
Anybody who has ever been inside a newspaper office will
recognise this as an implausible view. But The Skibbereen Eagle
gave a classic example of this editorial journocentricity. Skibbereen
is a small town beyond the black bog in the West of Ireland. The
Eagle is its local paper. In August 1914 its leading article
trumpeted: “We give this solemn warning to Kaiser Wilhelm: The
Skibbereen Eagle has its eye on you.” No doubt this warning came
as a thunderbolt to the chancelleries of Europe. But it was good
Leaderese, treating its readers as the centre of the world, and its
editorial as their trumpeter and fugleman.
The notion that a newspaper should have a strong opinion on any
subject under the sun or indeed under The Sun is a curious
convention of Journalese. Our advice to the electorate of
Pyidaugnsu Myanma Naingngandaw (Burma to you) or Burkina
Faso on how to vote may not be critical to the result of their
elections, since we do not have many readers there.
Most newspapers in most languages publish editorials in
Leaderese telling their readers what to think. Some local papers
now personalise their opinion pieces, with picture bylines of the
writer taken twenty years ago, when she/he was young and blonde.
This tends to weaken the force of the paper’s opinion. It is more
cunning to let the reader suppose that the leading article was written
anonymously by the Angel Gabriel or some even higher authority,
such as the Editor himself.
Leaderese, like its mother genre of Journalese, did not spring
fully armed out of the press. Its high hortatory and admonitory style
grew out of the storm of pamphlets of the Civil War and the French
Revolution. Revolutions throw up leaders in print as well as at the
barricades. In England the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1641
made it safer to publish opinions contrary to Establishment
wisdom, without being thrown into the Tower or worse. You can
trace the rise of Leaderese to the sermon, that branch of English
which was the source of news and opinions before newspapers.
Puritan and Anglican divines of the 17th and 18th centuries were
particularly eloquent at this literary genre.
An archaeologist of English style could trace the ancestry of

15
Leaderese back to the medieval trivium, the threefold road to
eloquence for young men on the make in the Middle Ages. Beyond
that you can track it to Roman schoolboys debating whether Julius
Caesar (or, as it might be today, Tony Blair) was a good thing. And
beyond that the Sophists of 5th century Athens teaching “ordinary
people” what to think. Socrates was made to drink hemlock for his
alarmingly right-wing leaders. Critics of the press think that this
sanction might encourage modern Editors to behave better.
The Times, founded in 1785, is the oldest surviving British daily
newspaper. So, with other newspapers that have folded or been
amalgamated out of existence, it founded the leading article that we
know and love today. And the language in which it is written:
Leaderese. Like many good things, it happened by accident. John
Walter, the founding father, did not set out to invent anything as
dodgy as a daily newspaper. He was a bankrupt coal merchant in
the City of London. So in order to revive his fortunes and pay his
creditors, he bought the patent to a novel form of printing called
Logography. This was sensational high tech of the period. Since
Gutenberg printers had been setting type letter by letter, picking
each letter out of its pigeon-hole with tweezers. Logography said:
“Why not save time by keeping the commoner words already made
up in type for instant use?” So, for example, Leaderese would
have a large supply of “moreover”s and “notwithstanding”s already
set in type.
In order to advertise his ingenious new system of Logography,
on January 1, 1785, Walter published a flysheet called The Daily
Universal Register. He stated the object of his exercise in his
mission statement, the first leading article: “A News-Paper ought to
be the Register of the times, and faithful recorder of every species
of intelligence; it ought not to be engrossed by any particular
object; but, like a well covered table, it should contain something
suited to every palate: observations on the dispositions of our own
and of foreign courts should be provided for the political reader;
debates should be reported for the amusement or information of
those who may be particularly fond of them; and a due attention
should be paid to the interests of trade, which are so greatly
promoted by advertisements.” Newspaper proprietors are still keen
on attracting ads. Roy Thomson, when he owned The Times,
claimed that he never read any of the editorial. But he measured the

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advertising space with a ruler every day. John Walter’s first leader
would have its string of clauses broken into separate sentences by
modern best practice. But its ex cathedra certainty that it alone
knows what it is talking about is classic Leaderese.
Logography was a failure, being overtaken by quicker systems of
printing. But the news sheet to advertise it was an idea that caught
the tide. This was a period of revolution and war, which
traditionally sell newspapers. So Walter dumped Logography, but
stuck with his news sheet. He renamed it The Times on January 1,
1788. Early issues seldom carried leading articles or leaders. And
when they did, these read suspiciously as though they were dictated
by the contemporary spin doctors at Downing Street, the Foreign
Office, and Horse Guards. But The Times was a runaway success,
and established a huge circulation for the period, making huge
profits. Before the revolution of industrial printing, newspapers had
such small circulations that they could not make a profit. By its
mass print runs, and the hot news and sharp opinions that made it
essential reading for the growing public clamouring for Reform,
The Times broke the chains of newspaper patronage. It became
independent, with independent views expressed in Leaderese. This
was red revolution and anathema to the old Three Estates of the
Realm. The leading articles in The Times were attacked for their
irresponsibility and gutter journalism. During the crises of the
Crimean War and the long struggle for Reform, Queen Victoria
would not allow what she described as “the atrocious Times” into
her palaces.
A defining moment for the emergence of leaders and Leaderese
as platoons of Journalese occurred in 1852. Prince Louis Napoleon
seized power in France by a coup d’état. Queen Victoria, Her
Government, and Her Loyal Opposition approved of him, as
preferable to wild democracy and another French Revolution. The
Times, never a friend of dictators until the Appeasement Years, did
not. So John Delane, the Editor, and his leader writers riddled Louis
Napoleon with a salvo of thunderous leaders. Napoleon complained
to Victoria, asked the Government to intervene, and tried to bribe
the Editor of The Times to lay off.
In the Debate on the Address that year, both the Prime Minister
and the Leader of the Opposition put the case for limiting this
alarming new loose cannon of Leaderese with decent self-restraint.

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The Earl of Derby, the foremost orator of the day, known as the
Rupert of Debate, declared: “If, as in these days, the press aspires
to exercise the influence of statesmen, the press should remember
that they are not free from the corresponding responsibility of
statesmen, and that it is incumbent on them, as a sacred duty, to
maintain that type of moderation and respect even in expressing
frankly their opinions on foreign affairs which would be required of
every man who pretends to guide public opinion.” Rupert
Schmupert of Debate.
Public oratory and Leaderese have become less starched since
then. Then The Times published a leaked ultimatum to the Tsar.
Nothing much changes in the eternal struggle for the freedom of the
press, and of the “ordinary” citizen to know what his Masters are
up to. So Lord Derby returned to the attack: “How is it possible that
any honourable man, editing a public paper of such circulation as
The Times, can reconcile to his conscience the act of having made
public that which he must have known was intended to be a public
secret?” The Editor and his leader writer replied the next day. Their
leader remains a ringing declaration of why the freedom of the
press is the palladium of public liberty. It brings tears to the eyes of
libertarians, and rage to the hearts of spin doctors and control
freaks. “We hold ourselves to be responsible, not to Lord Derby or
the House of Lords, but to the People of England for the accuracy
and fitness of that which we think proper to publish. Whatever we
conceive to be injurious to the public interests, it is our duty to
withhold. But we ourselves are quite as good judges on that point
as the Leader of the Opposition.” And that is still the justification
for leaks and leading articles in The Times and younger newspapers
worthy of the name.
From then on the leading article became an established feature.
Throughout the 19th century the shadowy (because anonymous)
leader writers published and refined the new genre of Leaderese.
They reflected and influenced the way that English changed. In the
days when Palmerston in his “Civis Romanus Sum” speech on the
Don Pacifico crisis (the classic example of gunboat diplomacy)
addressed the House of Commons for five hours without drawing
breath (except for effect, in order to introduce another quotation
from Thucydides), leading articles reflected his classical style.
Henry Reeve, Delane’s chief leader writer, was nicknamed Il

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Pomposo by his younger colleagues. And in an ungainly outburst of
Victoriano Italiano, imitators disdained the Leaderese of The Times
as “Printing House Square Ponderoso”. But as rhetoric became less
classical and less constipated, so Leaderese became shorter and
sharper for the new readers brought in by Reform, for which The
Times led the campaign.
Lord Northcliffe, one of the great eccentric owners of The Times,
and the only one so far to have been literally carted away foaming
at the mouth by the men in white coats, had a notice hung above the
News Room of The Times: REMEMBER: THEY ARE NINE. He
was referring to the mental age of Times readers. This message
infuriated the Black Friars (his name for his leader writers), who
took themselves and their calling pretty damned seriously. But
Northcliffe’s (exaggerated) slogan contains a germ of truth.
Journalists should recognise that their readers will include those
who know more about any subject than they do, and who are better
equipped for abstract thought. But short, sharp and simple are
virtues of Journalese. Elaboration, obscurity, and name-dropping
are vices not confined to students. The register of Journalese is not
a private language, except in the ferocious economy of the
headline. A newspaper should be written in styles to suit every
palate. But the leading articles, the heart of the paper, should be in
the best and clearest of contemporary written English. The
traditional coda of Times Leaderese during its brief period as
organ of the Ruling Class, “On the one hand this, on the other hand
that: only time will tell”, does not have the sharp edge of
good Leaderese.

Letters
The epistolary style of Letters to the Editor is a subset of Leaderese.
The Letters Page is still the bulletin board for Everyman to address
the nation. It is the only surviving medium for the formal letter,
signed, “I have the Honour, Sir, to remain your Faithful Servant,”
(the form of brown-nosing white lie known technically as a Phrop2).
It is an edited version of the phone-in, keeping out the nutters. Its

2. A nonsense word invented by Arnold Lunn for a competition in The

New Statesman.

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concision and sharp point make it the English equivalent of the
epigram in the Ancient World. In 1914 Max Beerbohm recognised
the emergence of the epistolary form of Journalese: “Could not this
outrage be averted? There sprang from my lips that fiery formula
which has sprung from the lips of so many choleric old gentlemen
in the course of the last hundred years and more: ‘I shall write to
The Times’.”

House styles of Journalese

Reporters are still called correspondents, as in “From Our Own
(From A Special) Correspondent”. That is precisely what the first
reporters were. They wrote letters to the Proprietor/Editor, often
anonymously, in order to avoid prosecution. And he published
them, and sometimes went to prison for it. They were free copy.
And because they tended to be written by the disaffected, they were
often lively copy. But as The Times and other newspapers started to
make pots of money from their mass circulations, they could afford
to employ professional hacks. And these need a house style, to
ensure that Colonel Gadaffi/Kadaffi/Q’udafi/ or whatever, is not
spelled in different ways all over the paper.
Because it contains rules and conventions going back two
centuries, the house style book of The Times is a historical
repository of Journalese sense and nonsense. For example, until
quite recently The Times persisted in spelling the Monna Lisa thus,
with two “n”s. This was to suggest to the world that The Times was
written by cultivated scholars and gentlemen, who knew that the
Lady’s title came from the Italian Madonna. This was a work of
supererogation. For one thing, the rest of the English-writing world
persisted in spelling her Mona. And for another thing, the Italians
call her La Gioconda. But in general, consistency in spelling and
style are virtues of Journalese. Aberrations and solecisms serve
only to annoy those nine-year-olds, the readers. The only good
reason for not splitting an infinitive, when splitting conveys your
meaning more precisely, is that out there in Tunbridge Wells and
Tonypandy, there are mad pedants whose only memory of English
grammar is the (imaginary and quite bogus) rule: Thou Shalt Never
Split an Infinitive. Readers, even the mad pedants, pay the wages of
journos. So it is folly to offend them without a good reason.

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Journalese
So newspapers should be written in clear, easy English that is a
pleasure to read, in order to provide wretched commuters on the
Northern Line with something to inform, improve, and educate
them. The genre of Journalese is part of a Venn diagram which
overlaps many other genres and styles. But most of Journalese
should overlap the central core of the common English of its
readers. When you start to examine Journalese as a distinct register
of English, it ought to fade away like the Cheshire Cat, leaving only
a smile behind.

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